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Chapter

ELEVEN

“It is, as always, a pleasure doing business with you, my lord.”

Guy stifled a yawn as he shook hands with the merchant, relieved that he had held his own with the vultures so far despite three days of practically no sleep.

“I am glad that we could have this discussion privately. It has made things much simpler.” After his disastrous meeting in London last week with Mr. Granger, the biggest, greediest, and most unreasonable grain merchant of all, picking off his rivals one by one seemed to be a good idea.

The other merchants were inclined to be more reasonable as individual businessmen rather than as a gluttonous collective.

To avoid the unpleasant standoff he’d had with them last year, he wanted to ensure that all the local farmers he represented had a decent price for their wheat without him having to hold them to ransom again.

Something that was proving significantly easier without including that crook Granger in the discussions.

Guy had one meeting to go and hoped that his going behind the most powerful grain merchant in London’s back to cut him out of the deal wouldn’t backfire on him.

None of the Kent merchants liked Granger despite their collective tendency to bow down to the man, so he hoped this last one wouldn’t need too much persuading to do some respectable business without him.

Or tip Granger off about what Guy was up to.

If they could all squeeze Granger out of this county, it would be better for everyone—merchants and farmers alike.

The bad news was that even while negotiating the livelihoods of all the local farmers who were depending on him to represent them at these critical discussions, his insomnia-addled mind had repeatedly wandered to her during the meetings.

The blasted woman who was responsible for the insomnia despite all his best efforts to exorcise the vixen and her obscenely perfect breasts from his thoughts.

Once she popped into his mind, he could barely concentrate on anything else and such an unwelcome distraction could not have come at a worse possible time.

Right now, he needed to focus on his work and not on the strange allure of her!

He had managed to avoid Miss Travers like the plague for four whole days already.

The inconvenient changes he’d had to make to his usual morning routine were a small price to pay for his sanity, so he had happily hauled his carcass out of bed an hour earlier to avoid that early bird at all costs.

According to Bill, who still smirked every time the menace featured in one of their conversations, “Lottie” arrived at the stables every day at eight sharp, so he made sure to have left there long before.

Returning only after dinner was well and truly done so that he could sneak upstairs to bed.

Again, eating his meals cold and on the hoof was a small price to pay to not have to see the menace.

For how exactly did one face the most infuriating woman in the world while he burned hotter than the sun with unwanted lust for her? So hot he feared he would spontaneously combust if he actually had to see her and her beguiling body ever again at close quarters.

The image of her emerging from the water, her shapely long legs bare to mid-thigh and her lush breasts as good as bare seemed to be permanently seared onto his mind.

His thoughts kept drifting to that memory every waking hour and his dreams—which were excruciating in their vividness—were unmitigated torture.

Because in those, dream-state Guy didn’t have to just drool over those pert, pointed breasts and their saucy, dark pink raspberry nipples in his mind.

He could suck them whole into his mouth and whirl his tongue around those tempting points while those long legs of hers wrapped themselves around him tightly, anchoring him in place while he buried himself inside her to the hilt.

And on the subject of unmitigated torture…

He subtly readjusted his breeches before he strode into Maidstone’s market square, furious at her that he’d also had to walk around with an uncomfortable flagstaff instead of a cock since that fateful morning by the pond.

Once his greedy eyes realized the water had rendered her blouse see-through, his frisky appendage had instantly stood to attention and had flatly refused to die down since.

It was perpetually half-cocked. No matter how many times he’d had to take care of it.

If the local vicar was right and the sin of masturbation robbed you of your sight, then Guy expected to be struck blind at any moment.

He hadn’t touched himself with such frenzied frequency since puberty!

Bloody woman!

Why the blazes was he so obsessed by her?

Common sense told him that lusting after a beautiful woman was a totally natural thing for a man to do when he had practically seen her naked and liked what he saw. Except there seemed to be more to it and none of it that he understood. She had a strange hold—

“Get out of the way, idiot!” The angry coachman shook him out of his reverie and with seconds to spare, Guy stumbled backward before the noon post ran him over. “Look where you’re going!”

“My apologies—” Bloody hell, but that woman was going to be the literal death of him if he wasn’t careful. Proof, if proof were needed that she needed to be both out of sight and out of mind or he was done for.

But as the carriage rattled past, he saw what he thought was her on the other side of the market square chatting to a stallholder.

Was his addled mind conjuring the menace now?

She had her back to him and a bonnet covered her hair completely, but there was something about the confident set of the distant woman’s shoulders, the animated tilt of her head, and her unusual height that suspiciously suggested that she could only be his Valkyrie.

As the woman moved sideways to visit another stall, so did Guy, using the sea of people and market traders to hide behind in case she turned and saw him.

Frankly, the last person he wanted to collide with was Miss Travers, yet the magnetic pull of her was too strong to ignore and as much as his head screamed at him to escape to the inn at all costs, his feet edged ever nearer anyway.

She wandered into a bakery, so he rapidly skirted the edge of the square to get a closer look, hoping against hope that it wasn’t his aunt’s companion so he could go about his business.

He was loitering in a nearby doorway when she emerged carrying a big box of cakes, his back pressed into the shadows and the brim of his hat tilted downward lest she recognize him.

Feeling utterly pathetic, his addled mind was already thinking of excuses to approach her.

For the excuse to have a brief interaction with her.

For the right words to make her smile at him in the same way she smiled at his flirtatious head groom.

What the blazes was that all about?

Suddenly her head whipped his way and she beamed.

As his breath caught and his stupid heart leapt, a fellow dashed past him.

Tall and handsome and beaming too. Guy’s foolish heart ached when Miss Travers threw herself at the golden Adonis, wrapping one of her arms around him as he spun her around while the other still held the string of the bakery box.

Then the man—who Guy now hated with a vengeance—kissed her forehead as he lowered her to the ground.

In return, she looked at the scoundrel with love radiating out of her pretty blue eyes.

Although barely ten feet away now, Guy couldn’t hear a word of their much too overfamiliar conversation, but he tasted bile in his throat as she looped her arm possessively through the other man’s.

Then they sauntered off. Grinning at one another like a pair of besotted lovebirds as they shared a joke.

One that he was paranoid enough not to wonder if it was about him.

Guy had no clue why he cared that Miss Travers clearly had a sweetheart—but he did. In truth, that new knowledge infuriated him more than the constant erection the minx had given him. He also should have left the pair of them to it and headed to his next meeting.

But he didn’t.

Instead, he followed them at a safe distance, for no other reason than he had to. His jealousy was as irrational as it was misplaced but it was real and it was worrying. Especially when he had never been the sort to suffer from it.

Miss Travers and her beau turned out of the square and headed to the small patch of common land where several horses had been left to graze.

Blodwyn, the mare he had reluctantly lent her, was there, and they both made a fuss of her.

The Valkyrie produced an apple and her Adonis fed it to her horse, while Guy loitered behind a stall still in the market square, watching the pair of them as if his life depended on it.

After a good few minutes, her man friend grabbed her about the waist in the most overfamiliar way to lift Miss Travers onto her mount. Instead of horsewhipping the brute as she should have for taking such a liberty, she laughed. As if she didn’t mind Mr. Handsome manhandling her in the slightest.

Within moments, they were both on horseback, grinning at one another as they trotted down the lane side by side.

Out of busy Maidstone toward the secluded countryside beyond.

Off to eat cake in private together. Unchaperoned.

Where he was in no doubt that more than some forehead kissing and some overfamiliar waist grabbing would take place.

A prospect that nearly made Guy’s head explode.

With an irrational red mist clouding his eyes and his judgment, he ran back to the stable at the inn where he had left Zeus, kicked him into a gallop as soon as they left the market square, and retraced their route.